Chapter 14 #4
“Selective obedience is a ducal privilege.” His humor dissolved beneath her next kiss, which was slow enough to let him feel the silver leaf warm between them.
They undressed by degrees, pausing for his shoulder and once because Margaret’s hair caught around a button. She laughed against his mouth while he freed it, and the sound belonged as fully to their bed as desire did.
On their sides, face to face, they could move without asking his knee to bear what it could not. Margaret guided his hand, adjusted the angle of his leg, and drew him closer when she was ready.
Their joining was familiar enough to be playful and chosen enough to remain astonishing. Henry followed her pace, kissed her through the moments when pleasure took speech from them, and allowed his body to be limited without imagining himself diminished.
Afterward they remained curved together beneath the blankets. Margaret rested one hand against his chest, while his injured shoulder lay supported and his knee held the warmth they had learned to preserve.
“The arrangement appears workable,” he said. Margaret’s sleepy smile touched his collarbone.
“We should review it quarterly.”
“I had hoped for more frequent meetings.”
She kissed him once in response, but before he could improve upon the suggestion, a restrained knock sounded from the outer sitting room. It was neither the hurried pounding of fire nor the authoritative rhythm Sarah used when someone required a doctor.
Henry reached for his dressing gown. Margaret was already sitting, her hair loose over one shoulder and the silver leaf bright against her skin.
“Remain here,” he said, then stopped before the old command completed itself. “Or come with me. Thomas would not knock at this hour without believing the matter should be recorded.”
Margaret put on her wrapper. “We will hear him in the sitting room.”
Thomas stood outside with a folded pension memorandum and an apology more anxious than the circumstance deserved. He did not enter until Margaret opened the door wider.
“I found one line missing,” he said. “It may be copying, and it may be mine. I checked twice because Mrs. Blackwood said no accounts until morning, but that seemed to make it important that I know precisely what I was disobeying.”
Margaret took the memorandum without inviting him to explain a conclusion he did not possess. Thomas showed her the expected quarterly entry in his private notes and the blank space in the House copy where a corresponding receipt or explanation ought to have appeared.
“Do you have any paper that proves payment or nonpayment?” she asked. Thomas shook his head.
“Only my own note of what I expected and the absence in the copied book,” he said. “I have not asked anyone else.”
“Good,” Margaret replied. “Do not ask tonight.”
She opened the small night book kept in the sitting-room desk and entered the date, Thomas’s observation, the two records compared, and the fact that no official paper had yet been examined.
Henry watched without offering to summon Croft, interrogate an official, or send riders into the winter dark.
“We shall audit the quarter with Dyer and the proper records,” Margaret said. “Until then, this is a discrepancy, not an accusation.”
Thomas’s shoulders lowered. “Am I to bring the book in the morning?”
“You will lock it where it ordinarily belongs and bring me the key after breakfast. No page is to be removed, copied again, or shown to another resident until we know what we are looking at.”
Thomas nodded. Henry walked with him to the outer door, where the young man paused.
“I am sorry to disturb Your Grace.”
“You brought a bounded fact to the person responsible for recording it,” Henry said. “That is not a disturbance. That is governance.”
Thomas left with the memorandum secured beneath his coat. Henry locked the suite door and returned to find Margaret sanding the new entry.
“It can wait until morning,” he said. Margaret closed the night book and placed it in the desk.
“Yes.” She turned the key and held it out to him. “Put this on the mantel, where neither of us can reach it from bed.”
Henry obeyed. The missing line remained missing, Croft remained unpleasant, and the world beyond the repaired suite retained its tiresome refusal to become safe merely because they loved one another.
Margaret took his hand and led him back toward the bed. She did not return for the ledger, and Henry did not offer to carry tomorrow alone.
The silver leaf rested over her heart when they settled again upon their sides. Beyond the door, Waterloo House held its finite beds, its locked accounts, its disputed rules, and the ordinary sounds of people permitted to remain.
Henry drew the blanket over Margaret’s shoulder and let her arrange his knee against hers. Their marriage had begun with terms devised for survival, but permanence had not made those terms unnecessary; it had made revision an intimacy of its own.
“Working week here,” Margaret murmured. “Rothbury when we wish.”
“Separate rooms when required,” Henry said. “Shared bed by preference.”
Her hand tightened warmly in his. They kept the rest of the evening, and tomorrow waited its proper turn.